About the work
Biedermann und die Brandstifter. A Morality Without a Moral (The Fire Raisers / The Arsonists) is a play by the Swiss writer Max Frisch, premiered on 29 March 1958 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. The play was preceded by a prose sketch of 1948 (written under the impression of the communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia) and a radio play of 1953. For the German premiere in Frankfurt, Frisch added an afterpiece. Alongside Andorra it is Frisch's best-known drama and a fixture of the school curriculum.
Plot
The wealthy hair-tonic manufacturer Gottlieb Biedermann reads in the newspaper of a series of arson attacks in which the perpetrators always nest themselves in their victims' homes as harmless peddlers. When the homeless wrestler Schmitz appears at his door and begs for shelter, Biedermann, out of cowardice and misguided good-naturedness, takes him in up in the attic — soon followed by the second arsonist, Eisenring. Although the two openly haul in barrels of petrol, fuses and detonators, Biedermann represses every warning, ingratiates himself and even invites them to a feast. He turns away the employee Knechtling, cheated of his patent, who thereupon takes his own life. Finally Biedermann himself hands the arsonists the matches — and his house, indeed the whole town, goes up in flames.
Cultural significance
Biedermann und die Brandstifter gave Frisch, already successful as a novelist, his breakthrough as a dramatist. The parable of the citizen's opportunism and self-inflicted blindness has been interpreted in many ways — as an allegory of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 as much as of any form of populist seduction. Frisch himself refused throughout his life to give a clear answer as to who the arsonists "really" are. The play is among the most-performed German-language dramas of the 20th century and remains a firm part of the school canon to this day.